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Color healthcare personnel are more likely to care for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID-19, more likely to report using improper or reused protective equipment, and positive for coronavirus Almost twice as likely to be found by Harvard Medical School researchers as white co-workers testing.
The study also shows that health care workers report a positive COVID test at least three times more often than the general population, increasing the risk to workers treating COVID patients.
Dr. Andrew Chan, lead author and epidemiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the study further highlights the issue of structural racism, this time focusing on the front-line roles and personalization offered to people of color. Reflected in protective equipment.
“When you think of it yourself, “health professionals should be in an equal position in the workplace,” really showed that our study wasn’t, “said Chan, a professor at Harvard School of Medicine. Told.
This study is based on over 2 million data COVID symptom research app US and UK users from March 24th to April 23rd. A study conducted by researchers at King’s College London Published Journal Lancet Public Health.
Lost on the Frontline, a project by KHN and The Guardian, has published a profile of 164 health workers who died at COVID-19, with more than 900 people being reported victim of the disease. Analysis of the story revealed that 62% of deceased healthcare workers were of color.
They are included According to the union, Roger Riddell, 64, a supply manager at a black hospital in Michigan, sought an N95 ventilator but was denied and had to enter the room of a COVID-positive patient. Latina Sandra Oldfield, 53, worked in a hospital in California and her workers also wanted N95. She was wearing a less protective surgical mask when caring for a COVID-positive patient before she died of a virus.
Research continues with other studies showing that minority healthcare workers are more likely to care for minority patients in their communities, often in resource-poor facilities VA Pittsburgh Healthcare System Promotion ..
These workers may have a higher proportion of sick patients, as federal data show that a minority of patients are positive and that they are disproportionately hospitalized for the virus Said Essian, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
“I’m not surprised by these findings,” he said, “but I’m disappointed with the results.”
UCLA doctor and researcher Dr. Foramay also found that the study found that black and Latin American health workers live in or visit families in the most severely affected minority communities in a pandemic. Said that it reflects the fact that they are doing. Lines of all industries.
The study showed that colored healthcare workers were five times more likely to test positive for COVID-19 than the general population.
Their work experience was also different from that of whites alone. The study found that colored workers were 20% more likely than white workers to care for patients with suspected or confirmed COVID. Especially for black workers, the rate has reached 30%.
According to the New York Times, blacks and Latins are three times as likely to get the virus as whites overall. analysis Data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are shown. (Latin can be any race or combination of races.)
Also, colored healthcare workers were more likely to report inadequate or recycled PPE, at a rate 50% higher than that reported by white workers. For Latin Americans, the rate was twice that of white workers.
Fiana Tulip, a daughter of a respiratory therapist in Texas who died at COVID-19 on July 4, says she is “upset,” and her mother, Latina Isabel Papadimitriu, has been working for many years. He said he is facing discrimination.
Jim Manja, CEO of St. John’s Well Child and Family Center in southern Los Angeles, said most low-income earners are colored at the clinic. They test about 600 people per day, with a positive test rate of 30% confirmed in June and July. He said they saw a high positive rate in nursing homes that mobile clinics tested.
He said seven full-time workers scrutinized the United States and the world to secure PPE for his staff, and at some point, got a shipment of the N95 ventilator two days before exhaustion. .. “It was literally touch and go,” he said.
All health care workers who reported inadequate or recycled PPE were at increased risk of infection. Those who were poorly equipped or reused who saw COVID patients were more than five times more likely to be infected with the virus than workers with appropriate PPE who did not see COVID patients.
Research said that reuse could pose the risk of material self-contamination or failure, but the findings are from March and April before extensive efforts to decontaminate used PPE. I was careful.
Chan says even healthcare workers who report appropriate PPE to see COVID patients are far more likely to get the virus than workers who do not see COVID patients. The finding suggests the need for more training to safely remove and install protective equipment and additional research into how health care workers get sick.
